Chapter XXX: In Many Places (1)

“The whole value and meaning of life lies in the single sense of
conscience--duty.”--FRANCES ANNE KEMBLE.

“Do weel and dread nought though thou be espyit;
He is little gude worth that is not envyit:
Take thou nae heed what tales man tells;
If thou would’st live undeemed, gang where nae man dwells.”
--SIR WALTER SCOTT _in Orloff Davydoff’s Album_.

“True happiness is only to be obtained by devotedness to the will
of God. Seeking the universal good--the highest good of all. Life
can only be truly happy, not when we are in ecstasy, but when we
are doing right.”--THOMAS COOPER, _Thoughts at Fourscore_.

“Let nothing disturb thee,
Let nothing affright thee--
All passeth:
God only remaineth.
Patience wins all things;
Who hath God lacketh nothing:
Alone God supplieth.”
--ST. THERESA’S _Bookmark_.

Greatly as I always enjoy my little home of Holmhurst, dear as every corner of it is to me, I never feel as if it was well to stay there too long in winter alone. In summer, Nature itself can give sufficient companionship; but when earth is dead and frost-bound, the silence in the long hours after sunset becomes almost terrible, and I increasingly feel that late autumn and winter are the best time for visits.

* * * * *

_To_ VISCOUNT HALIFAX.

“_Holmhurst, Nov. 25._--I have much enjoyed a visit from Mr. and Mrs. Cummings, the Americans who were so kind to us on our terrible return journey from Italy in 1860, and of whom the wife, at least, is so clever, that she is suffering--as Mrs. Kemble said once of some one--from a constipation of her talents. They came here fresh from a visit to Haworth, much impressed with its severe desolation,--‘that any one should be able to have any hope, or look forward to a future life, on the top of Haworth hill is nothing short of a miracle.’ They have made a Brontë museum there now, chiefly full of Branwell’s drawings, of great interest, chiefly military. Did you know that Mr. Nichols hoped to have been rector when Mr. Brontë died? But it was given by election, and he was unpopular, and it went against him. He is still living in Ireland, whither he took all the Brontë memorials he cared for. The rest were sold by auction, and the butcher, baker, and candlestick-maker of Haworth bought them. The sexton showed Mrs. Cummings some of Charlotte’s underclothing, delicately marked by herself with her C. B., and her wedding shoes, of some grey material to match her dress. He had often seen her and her sister come out of the house, and go through the little gate at the back to the moors, which at Haworth are grass, not heather. After Charlotte married, Mr. Nichols would not let her write. His mind was of the very narrowest, and he disapproved of novels, and when she was pent up in that solitude, and all her secret thoughts were pent up too, and never allowed to come out in writing, she--died.

“Mrs. Cummings says we should not like America; ‘it is a country utterly without perspective; one must go up to the Indians and the Jesuit missionaries for that.’ She has been describing Miss Louisa Alcott,[539] the well-known authoress. ‘She lived with her old father and her beautiful mother and her three sisters. They used to write little stories. One day her sisters said, “Louisa, you must write something more than these.”--“I would, but I can’t do it here,” she answered. So the sisters clubbed their little savings together, and they sold a few things, and Louisa went to Boston. There she called upon Roberts, the publisher of all American good things, and said, “I want to write a story.”--“Very well,” he answered; “what kind will you take?”--“Oh, I can’t make up anything,” said Louisa; “I can only just write what I know.”--“Oh, you can just write what you know,” said Roberts; “then don’t stay talking here; go away at once and begin.” So she went and lived by herself and wrote, and in five weeks she brought him her “Little Women.” He took it and said, “Come again to-morrow.” And when she went next day he said, “Well, I will take your story, and I will offer you one of two things; either you can take two hundred dollars down for it, or you can take your chance.”--“But what would you do if you were me?” asked Miss Alcott. Roberts said he had never been placed in such an awkward predicament in his life, but he spoke the truth and said, “I would take my chance.” She did, and soon after he had to pay her 10,000 dollars.[540] She wrote “Little Men” afterwards, but it did not answer as well; boys do not take books to their pillows as girls do.’

“‘I love crying,’ said Mrs. Cummings, ‘but then I must have somebody to cry to. I cried as a little girl because I thought my mother might die, but I cried most because I thought that then I should have no one to cry _to_.’ Miss Alcott said to her, ‘My dear, I shouldn’t mind dying if it wasn’t for the funeral.’

“‘Mr. Tennyson was very rude and coarse,’ said Mrs. Cummings, ‘but he died well--reading his little book in the moonlight: he really couldn’t have done it better.’

“‘Louisa Payson, who wrote “The Pastor’s Daughter” and many other books,[541] would not say “thank you” when she was a little girl. Her father, the stern minister, punished her in various ways, but it was no good--she said she couldn’t. So at last, at five years old, he turned her out of doors late on a winter’s evening. He went to his affairs, forgot her, I suppose; but her mother was in an agony, and she prayed for her child with all the spirit that was in her. At last she could bear it no longer, and she opened the door a little way, and then she heard a little wail of “I can’t say thank you: I can’t say thank you.” What was the end I do not know, but at any rate Louisa did not die, and lived to write books.’

“These are some snatches from the Holmhurst tea-table.”

* * * * *

_To_ HERBERT VAUGHAN.

“_Kingston Vicarage, Wareham, Nov. 10._--You would have liked going with us to Wool, on a ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles’ pilgrimage, for there, rising by the reedy river-side, is the old gabled house to which Tess was taken after her marriage. It is exactly as Hardy describes it;[542] even the plank bridge remains across which Angel carried her in his sleep to the stone coffin at Bindon Abbey. The two old pictures mentioned in the book really hang at the top of the staircase, and the lady in one of them is supposed to blow out the candle of any one who ventures up the stairs after midnight. The whole country-side is full of memories of the D’Urbervilles, and there are many still living who depose to having met their phantom coach and four with outriders. The family still exists at Kingston as--Tollerfield!

“We had an awful storm last night, but such hurricanes are the fashion in Purbeck. A Mr. Bellasye, returning home, met, not his bathing-machine, but his bathing-_house_ coming to meet him across the hedges and ditches. Mr. and Mrs. Wordsworth had a huge hole blown into their roof by one gust; but that did not much signify, as the next gust blew a haystack on to the roof and filled the hole up. All the cabbages and other vegetables in the kitchen-garden are frequently blown out of the earth and into a heap in a corner, and on one occasion those in the rectory-garden were all blown into the church porch.”

* * * * *

_To_ VISCOUNT HALIFAX.

“_Elvedon, Thetford, Nov. 14._--All the way back from Dorsetshire did I come for the pleasure of meeting the Duchess of York here (at Lord and Lady Iveagh’s); but that was not to be, as an impending event is considered too near for her to travel with safety. The Duke is here, and very unaffected and pleasant, really a very nice prince, and quite good-looking. He never fails to be punctual to the moment--a grand quality for a prince, and due, probably, to naval discipline. He talks a great deal, and talks well, but in reality princes have no chance--no chance at all--conversationally, as no one ever contradicts them, however much they disagree; no subjects are aired but those which they choose for themselves, and the merest commonplaces from royal lips are listened to as if they were oracles.

“Anything more odious or annoying than being a prince certainly cannot be imagined. Such a wearisome round of dullest duties and painful ‘pleasures’ as it is their life’s-work to live in like a tread-mill. Then, every fault of manner, far more of conduct and character, is commented, dwelt on, and exaggerated. I should be sorry for any prince, but am really dreadfully sorry for this one, as he would have been charming, and might have been extremely happy if the misfortune of his birth had not condemned him to the severe and miserable existence of princedom, in which all minor faults are uncorrected because unsuggested, though I believe such a true friend and fine character as, for instance, Lord Carrington, would always notice any sufficiently grave to be of consequence either to the country or the royal family.

“I floated here in the luxurious saloon carriage of a special train, but felt rather shy, because whereas all the rest of the party were on terms of christian-name intimacy, I knew none of them before except Lord Rowton, who is, however, always very kind and pleasant. But I was interested to see those who are so frequently part of the royal circle, and liked them all, especially and extremely Lord and Lady Carrington; but then--everyone does!

“I wonder if you know this house of Elvedon. It was Duleep Singh’s, and he tried to make it like an Indian palace inside. Much of his decoration still remains, and the delicate white stucco-work has a pretty effect when mingled with groups of tall palms and flowering plants. Otherwise the house (with the kindest of hosts), is almost appallingly luxurious, such masses of orchids, electric light everywhere, &c. However, a set-off the other way is an electric piano, which goes on pounding away by itself with a pertinacity which is perfectly distracting. In the evenings singing men and dancing women are brought down from London, and are supposed to enliven the royal guest.

“You know, probably, how this place is the most wonderful shooting in England. The soil is so bad that it is not worth cultivating, and agriculture has been abandoned as a bad business. Game is found to be far more profitable. The sterile stony fields are intersected at intervals by belts of fir; the hedges, where they exist, are of Scotch fir kept low; and acres of thick broom are planted. Each day I have gone out with the luncheon party, and we have met the shooters at tents pitched at different parts of the wilderness, where boarded floors are laid down, and a luxurious banquet is prepared, with plate and flowers. The quantity of game killed is almost incredible, and the Royal Duke shot more than any one, really, I believe, owing to his being a very good shot, and not, as so often is the case in royal battues, from the birds being driven his way.

“A great feature of the party is Admiral Keppel, kindest, most courteous, and most engaging of old gentlemen, so captivating that there is always a rivalry amongst the ladies as to who shall walk with him, and amongst the men to get hold of his stories. He told me of how his father first started him on his naval career, and, while he talked it over at Holcombe, made him sit in the same chair in which he had talked the same subject over with Nelson when he was starting _him_.

“He described the prayers at Holcombe on Sunday evening in his boyhood. After dinner the men were allowed an hour or two over their wine. Then the prayer-bell rang, and they all went in. Afterwards an old servant stayed to take up those who could not get up from their knees, and carry them to bed by turns when they were too drunk to go by themselves.

“He remembered Charles James Fox reeling down the corridor at Holcombe, falling helplessly from side to side. His father followed him, and he followed his father, who kept exclaiming, ‘Good God! drunk! Good God! drunk again!’ for the expression had not gone out then.

“He said that the present Lord Leicester and his father had married at exactly a hundred years apart.”

* * * * *

_To_ W. H. MILLIGAN _and_ JOURNAL.

“_Nov. 27, Hornby Castle, Bedale._--I came here yesterday. Several people were in the castle omnibus when I got into it at the station, of whom a grand lion-like old man turned out to be Mr. Bayard, the American Ambassador. It was dark when we arrived. We found the Duchess (of Leeds), tall, gracious, and most winning in manner, and indeed all the family, in a noble hall, coved at the top, with busts in the upper niches, like the halls of Roman palaces, and looking (by daylight) into a courtyard, which is very picturesque and curious.

“Lady Harewood is here, sweet-looking and very white, with a pleasant daughter, Mr. and Lady Alice Shaw Stewart, and several young men. Mr. Bayard came down to dinner much delighted with a book he had found in his room--the ‘Life of Agrippina’--in which ‘What news from Armenia?’ is anxiously asked, showing how the same subject occupied conversation then as now, at a distance of nineteen centuries. He said, ‘When bad men _conspire_, good men ought to _confederate_.’

“This morning, in the library, I had much and delightful talk with Mr. Bayard. He gave an interesting account of the allotment of land in America: how a reserve was left to the Indians, but they were dying out, chiefly because of their catching all the vices of Europeans, especially their love of alcohol. He said they were like the buffaloes. These used to come down and swoop through the country in vast herds, and devour all the spring produce; and later, in their vast battalions they would swoop back again; but now, fettered and shut in by barriers and fences, they pined, starved, and died; and so it was with the Indians. He described how, after an unjust woman had published a libel on her country,[543] the greatest suffering had resulted to the slaves, who would follow their former masters to suffering, wounds, imprisonment, and death. A Southern lady, when ‘the army of liberation’ approached, had entrusted all her silver and jewels to her slaves, and they had brought it all back safely after the army had passed.

“He talked of the Banco di S. Giorgio at Genoa--‘one of the most interesting buildings in the world;’ that whereas the Bank of London had lasted two centuries, that of Genoa had lasted five: that the Bank was the greatest evidence of the philosophy of nations. No aspersion was ever cast upon it, and this was because those who administered it had never derived any profit from it, only honour. An instance of its usefulness as a record-office occurred lately, when a man in America offered Mr. H. an autograph letter of Columbus. To all appearance it was genuine, but Mr. H. asked leave, which was readily granted, to have a photograph facsimile made of it before purchasing. In the Banco di Giorgio the original letter was found, and, when compared with the facsimile, proved that the copy was false. This was especially fortunate, as, after Napoleon I., ‘that great collector of other people’s property,’ took away the archives of Genoa, though most were restored, all were not.

“The library at Hornby is full of interest, but I can only remember a fifteenth-century ‘Roman de la Rose;’ a first edition of Shakspeare, which came to its present owners through Henrietta, Duchess of Marlborough, who inherited it from William Congreve; and a copy of ‘Dionysius the Areopagite,’ by Beghir, ‘the one-eyed scribe of Brabant’--most delightful name--with notes by Dean Colet.

“The Duchess has shown us the house minutely and delightfully. The family portraits were full of interest, beginning with that of Sir William Hewitt, whose daughter married William Osborne, the apprentice who saved her when she fell over London Bridge, and who founded the Leeds family. In a curious Hogarth of ‘The Beggar’s Opera,’ the Duke of Bolton is represented watching the acting of Polly Peachum, whom he afterwards married: the picture is here because Sir Conyers d’Arcy, an ancestor of the house, is also represented. Mr. Bayard was delighted to find portraits of the wife of the seventh Duke, who was Miss Caton, one of four beautiful American sisters.[544] The Duchess was amused that I had never heard of ‘Godolphin Arabian,’ the ancestor of a succession of famous racehorses.[545] In one of the rooms is the miniature spinning-wheel of Madame de Pompadour; in another, a bed of such glorious embroidery that when Lady Marian Alford was here, she could not get up for looking at it.”

* * * * *

“_Nov. 29._--At breakfast, at one of several little round tables, Mr. Bayard talked pleasantly of a grave in the cemetery at Nuremberg. It is one of Adam Kraft’s iron tombstones, and it bears no name. Affixed to it is a human skull, exquisitely modelled, with a jaw which opens and shuts. In the forehead--the bronze forehead--is a white patch of some other metal. The story is that the owner of that skull was very unhappily married. His misery drove him from home, drove him into very bad company, and he sank lower and lower. One day he suddenly died and was buried; but soon afterwards his family began to suspect foul play, and he was exhumed. At first his body seemed to bear no witness, but then, in his forehead, under his hair, a large nail was found, buried up to the hilt, hammered in so accurately that no blood had come. Every one believed that it was his wife who had done it, but it could not be brought home to her; his associates were too bad for their evidence to be trusted. But the model of his skull was laid upon his grave, and his wife left the place; she could not continue to exist near it.

“We went to luncheon at Thorp-Perrow with Sir Frederick and Lady Milbank, who have a glorious garden. He is full of antiquarian lore and interests, and has a precious collection of old locks and keys. She knows sixteen languages well, and is learning a seventeenth. Hungarian she acquired for the sake of its literature. A despatch came to the Foreign Office in Hungarian, and no one there could read it, but Austen Lee sent it to Lady Milbank, who translated it at once. The Milbanks were very intimate with Madame Goldschmidt, whom they lived next door to in London. One day in a church--a country church--they saw her go out of her pew and shake a woman by her shoulders. ‘What on earth had that unfortunate woman done?’ they asked when they came out. ‘Why, didn’t you hear she was singing a false second.’”

* * * * *

“_Hams, Birmingham, Nov. 30._--This is a large house of extreme comfort, and its owner, Lord Norton, who looks sixty, though he is eighty-two, is one of the most agreeable hosts in England. Walking on the terrace this morning, he said he ought to put up a slab to record how the whole constitution of New Zealand was settled on that terrace: that which was arranged while walking up and down there had never been altered. The view of the pretty windings of the Thame recalled the exclamation of a famous landscape-gardener when he saw it--‘Clever!’ ‘It was not made, it is natural,’ said Lord Norton. But no, his friend could not regard it except from the gardening point of view, and ‘clever’ was all he could say. The river was terribly polluted by Birmingham, and Lord Norton went to law about it. ‘Should the convenience of one man be considered before that of millions?’ exclaimed the Birmingham advocate at the trial. ‘Yes,’ shouted the opposition, ‘for the grandeur of English law is that millions may not interfere with the comfort and well-being of a single individual. Now the pollution is partially diverted into a sewage farm five miles in extent.

“The clergyman here has only the care of three hundred souls, so he keeps three hundred chickens, and is often able to supplement his income by getting fifty pounds for a cock.

“An oak avenue leads to the church, being a remnant probably of the Forest of Arden, of which there are many traces still, but such an avenue is very rare. The late storm had blown down several fine trees. ‘How strange it is,’ said Lord Norton, ‘that amid the thousand--the million--theories that science has put forth, there should be none about the wind: it is one of the many incidental proofs of the truths of the Bible, that our Saviour saw this when he spoke of--“The wind bloweth where it listeth,” &c.

“‘Those who say that as to religion we know nothing, do not recognise that half religion is instinct (every one has the instinct that there is a God), and the other half what Pascal calls “the submission of reason.”’

“Lord Norton used to know very well Ellis the shoemaker, who devoted himself to the reformation of boys. He said, ‘I do not take them to make shoes only; I take them to give them a conscience.’ He said, ‘Many people say that the boys are fools, but they are philosophers. They reason at night. I overhear them; I hear them reasoning as to whether there is a God.’ There was one boy especially who denied this, who laughed at all who believed. One day this boy was given a parcel to take to Sir Moses Montefiore. Now the boys may steal, but however much they do that, when they are entrusted with anything, they are most tenacious to fulfil their trust. This boy only knew of Sir Moses by his popular name of ‘the King of the Jews,’ and all day long he asked his way to him in vain. He could not find him anywhere. Evening closed in, and he was faint with hunger and fatigue. He was quite sinking, but at the last gasp cried, ‘O God, if there be a God, help me.’

“Immediately a policeman rushed at him. ‘What have you got there, you young rascal? What’s in that parcel?--something you’ve been stealing, I suppose?’--‘No, ‘taint; it’s a parcel for the King of the Jews, and I can’t find him.’--‘Why, you young fool,’ said the policeman, shaking him, ‘it’s Sir Moses Montefiore you mean: I can show you where to find him.’

“That night the boys were philosophising as usual, declaring that there was no God, there couldn’t be, when the boy who had taken the parcel shouted, ‘Stop that rubbish, you fellows; there _is_ a God, and I _know_ it: and as for you, you’re just as much able to judge of God as a worm is to judge of me.’”

* * * * *

“_Dec. 2._--A walk amidst the remnants of the Forest of Arden led to much talk about trees. ‘When Gladstone meets any one new,’ said Lord Norton, ‘his first thought is, “What does he know? what can I get out of him?” When he met Lord Leigh, he had heard of Stoneleigh, that it possessed some of the finest oaks in England; so, when he sat down by him, he began at once, “Lord Leigh, have you any theory as to the age of oaks?”--“Yes, certainly I have; I possess several myself that are above a thousand years old.”--“And how do you know that is so?” said Gladstone. “Well,” said Lord Leigh, “I have several that are called ‘Gospel Oaks,’ because the old Saxon missionaries used to preach under them more than eight hundred years ago, and they would not be likely to choose a young oak to preach under: we may suppose that they chose an oak at least two hundred years old.”--“Well, that is a very good reason,” said Gladstone.’

“Lord Norton had lately been with Gladstone to Drayton, full of Peel relics, and with the wonderful collection of portraits which Sir Robert brought together. All the heads of Government, from Walpole to the Peel Administration, are represented. The pistols are preserved with which Peel intended to fight O’Connell at Calais, but O’Connell’s wife prevented it by giving notice and getting him arrested at Dover.

“While talking of hunting as conducive to the manliness of Englishmen, Lord Norton said, ‘When I was hunting with Charlie Newdigate, a boy almost naked, not quite, came out of a coal-pit, and on a donkey, without saddle or bridle, hunted with us all day, not going over the hedges, but through them. Newdigate was delighted. “_That’s_ the stuff English heroes are made of,” he said, and he had a long talk with the boy afterwards, and explained to him all about the field, &c.... In Northumberland there was a boy who would ride one of his father’s bulls. His father cut him off at last, and would have nothing more to do with him. ‘I’m not a bad father,’ he said, ‘and I don’t mind his riding my bull, but when he takes him out with the hounds it’s too much.’”

* * * * *

“_The Deanery, Llandaff, Dec. 7._--Lord Robert Bruce told me the facts of Lord Llanover’s ghost story. As Sir Benjamin Hall and he were riding in the Park in London, Sir Benjamin distinctly saw Lord Rivers, who was an intimate friend of his, and he _saw him vanish_. He went to his club immediately afterwards, and told what he had seen, and before he left the club a telegram was brought in announcing that Lord Rivers was dead. Afterwards Sir Benjamin Hall went to Mrs. Hanbury Leigh, and told her what had happened, adding, ‘You know this must mean something; it must mean that I am myself to die within the year;’ and so he did.

“I have enjoyed being again with the cousin so deeply loved in my childhood, and also seeing the really beautiful work of the gentle and, I am sure, holy Dean amongst the young men preparing for orders, who hover reveringly around him.’

“Catherine Vaughan has told me how, after Augusta Stanley’s death, she said to Mrs. Drummond (of Megginch), who was living at the Deanery, ‘Augusta’s presence so seems to fill this place, that I quite wonder she never appears here;’ and was startled by the way in which Mrs. Drummond said, ‘_She does_.’ Augusta used on her death-bed to say to Arthur, ‘I shall always be near you when you give the Benediction.’ One day in the Abbey, between the arches, but quite near Arthur, Mrs. Drummond most distinctly saw Augusta--a vaporous figure, wrapped in folds of vaporous white drapery, but with every feature as distinctly visible as in life. This was just before the Benediction, and as its last tones died away the appearance vanished. Mrs. Drummond had no doubt about it at all.”

* * * * *

_To_ GEORGE COCKERTON.

“_Burwarton, Shropshire, Dec. 12._--This is a charming place in the high Clee Hills, and Lord and Lady Boyne, who live in it, are quite delightful. I have been working for a great part of several days in the library at a little book on ‘Shropshire,’ which I hope to be able to finish another year. You would have been amused by the quaint sayings of an old clergyman who came to dinner. Speaking of an unusually stupid neighbour he said, ‘His folly is incredible, but even he has his lucid intervals, for the other day he told me he knew he was an ass.’

“I would give up, if I were you, taking the extra work you speak of. There is an old Swedish proverb which says--‘You cannot get more out of an ox than beef,’ and there is no use, none, in trying to do, or to be, two things at once.”

* * * * *

_To_ VISCOUNT HALIFAX.

“_Rome, April 23, 1896._--I wonder if you know that I have been abroad since the first of February. At first, for a month, I was on ‘the Rivieras,’ finishing up a little volume which will be so called, and which will appear before next winter. Some new places are opened up now by a railway--a most beautiful miniature railway--from Hyères to S. Raphael, and amongst them is S. Maxime, a quiet scene of tranquil beauty, where the pension is still only six francs, in a charming little hotel with a garden which comes down to a sea-cove, where you look across transparent shallows of emerald-green water into mountain distances, not grand, but supremely lovely, and where, in our long-ago days, you and I should have been in a fever of romantic interest over the old castle of Grimaud, which was the cradle of the princely Grimaldis.

“At Nice, I was not in the town, but at the old Villa Arson, which you will remember. It is now a hotel, though its wonderful garden, full of statues, staircases, fountains, and grottoes amongst the flowers and palm-trees, is quite untouched. It was all beautiful, and the sky was cloudlessly blue for a month; and I lingered at Bordighera with the Strathmores and my dear old friend Emilia de Bunsen, and then at Alassio with my cousin Lady Paul, and at beautiful Rapallo. But oh! the difference on entering real Italy, and finding oneself in the delightful old-world streets of Lucca, with their clean pavements and brown green-shuttered houses, with the air so much more bracing, the sky so much more soft, and the pleasant manner and winning tongue of the Italian people.

“At the Florence station I had an unpleasant experience, in being robbed of £100 by two roughly-jostling men at the entrance of the carriage. It was a great loss, but I could not help admiring the cleverness with which they contrived to extract my pocket-book out of the inner breast pocket of my coat _with a greatcoat over it_. They were taken up afterwards--Frenchmen, I am glad to say, not Italians--and immense booty of watches, purses, &c., found upon them, all taken at Florence station; but I have no chance of recovering my notes. I have had to appear against them already six times and to identify them in prison.

“My last six weeks have been spent in Rome,--spoilt, destroyed, from the old Rome of our many winters here, but settling down now into the inferior mediocrity to which the Sardinian occupation has reduced it. And, though one does not see them every hour as one used to do, there are still many lovely and attractive corners to be hunted up. The Italian archaeologists (so called) are also finding out that they have made a great mistake in tearing away all the plants and shrubs which protected the tops of the ruins, and are comically occupied in planting little roots of grass and chickweed on their barren summits. There are very few capable or interested winter visitors now. They mostly belong to the class of the first of the three audience-seekers to whom Pius IX. addressed his usual question of ‘How long have you been in Rome, and how much have you seen?’ and who answered, ‘I have been here three days, and have seen everything.’[546]

“Good old Dr. Gason has died lately (the man of whom Pius IX. said--‘un certo pagano, chi si chiama Jasone’), the leader of the Evangelical party here--one of a class who seemed to me ‘every one’ when I was a boy, and when the dreary desert of Sunday was only enlivened by Foxe’s ‘Book of Martyrs’ and ‘Josephus,’ and almost everything pleasant was a ‘carnal indulgence.’ How few there are who think like that now--no one who has a real part in my life since dear Charlotte Leycester passed away. Certainly, there is no one now to think one--well, much worse than a pagan for taking one’s sketch-book on Sundays to the Palace of the Caesars, where I have spent many quiet hours meditating on my past and its past. I am often oppressed, however, by my great loneliness, by the want of any relation who has a real interest in me, by the constant feeling--however kind people are--of _signifying_ nothing to anybody. And those who remember our old life--the old life with the mother and Lea which was so different from this--are becoming very, very few. I can only try to say--

‘Call me, silent voices,
Forward to the starry track
Glimmering in the heights beyond me,
On, and always on.’[547]

“The ruin of the great families here is depressing. There has been a sale at the old historic Orsini palace, at which a marble statue holding a baton behind the auctioneer seemed to repeat his action and to preside coldly over the ruin of his house and dispersion of its treasures. And on the floor of the hall, appropriately surrounded by overthrown marble pedestals, lay the great bust of the Orsini Pope, with a look of unutterable disgust upon his face at having been just sold for £6. I bought a little Madonna, which will adorn Holmhurst, if I can get it out of the country.

“There is a new line to Viterbo now, which brings many places, formerly difficult of access, within easy reach. With the Gordons from Salisbury I went to Anguillara, splendid in colour from the orange roofs of its quaint houses rising high above the broad, still lake in which Bracciano and other towns on the farther shore were reflected. We wandered afterwards in the beautiful gardens of an old ‘Ser Vincenzo,’ with woods--real trees--of camelias in fullest bloom, and larks singing, and carpets of violets. Then another day, a large party of us went to Segni in the purple recesses of the Volscian mountains, and saw that wonderful arch whose origin is lost in pre-historic mystery. We took our luncheon with us, and ate it on the down above the huge stones of the wall. But generally we have something odd at the village inns. ‘How I like topographical gastronomy!’ said old Mrs. Blackburn of Moidart on one of these tourettes.

“Few interesting visitors have been at Rome this year, but having Lady Airlie and Lady Kenmare here has been very pleasant, and dear old Miss Garden--even in her great feebleness, which, alas! is constant now--always ripples with wit and wisdom. At Mrs. Terry’s I met Miss Paterson, the martyr-bishop’s sister, who told me how her old father, when he first learnt his son’s determination to go out, began to say, ‘Oh, I cannot let him go,’ and then broke in with, ‘But oh! I _cannot_ deny him to God.’ He parted with him knowing they could never meet again, but, after a time, in his letters found interest and consolation. To-day--a desperately wet day--has been enlivened by a summons to luncheon with the Crown Princess of Sweden, whom I think one of the most charming, natural, and attractive of human beings; and oh! how simple, how utterly without affectation is that sort of person who can have nothing to _pretend_ to. It is that, I suppose, which makes such people so much the easiest to talk to, which makes one feel so far more at rest with them than with persons of another, even of one’s own class. The Princess’s health obliges her to winter in Italy, away from her husband and her little sons, but she will hurry back to them with the warm weather. There was no one else at luncheon but the lady and gentleman in waiting, and the conversation was chiefly about ghost stories, the Princess declaring that ‘every hair of her head had curled up’ from one I had told her at Eastbourne.

“There is a sort of homely amusement in seeing--I cannot help sometimes counting them!--the great number of people who go about here with the familiar little red and black volumes of ‘Walks in Rome.’ Sometimes also I am touched by a kind note from an unknown hand saying that one of my other books has been helpful to them. I am so glad when this happens. As to any other feeling about my books, I think I gradually get to _realise_ how ... ‘there is one glory of the terrestrial, another glory of the celestial,’ and how one has to keep that in one’s heart.”

* * * * *

_To_ MISS GARDEN _at Rome_.

“_Viterbo, May 1, 1896._--Yesterday I went to Toscanella. The landlord of the hotel was to engage a little carriage for me, which I found at the door when I went down, but with a horse which was an absolute skeleton. Still they declared it could go, and it _could_. How it rushed, and tore, and swung us down the rose-fringed descent to the great Etruscan plain, where the faint dome of Montefiascone rose in the blue haze against the heavens, beyond the aërial distances of burnt grass, broken here and there by Etruscan caves and ruins. Then how the skeleton horse still galloped into the uplands, till great towers appeared grouped like ninepins, or rather like S. Gemignano. It is yet a long circuit to the town, a descent into a rocky gorge, then a steep ascent winding round the hill outside the walls, a sort of Calvary to this Jerusalem, where the great churches stand, S. Pietro like the most magnificent cathedral, girdled by huge walls and towers, with a ruined episcopal palace beside it, and a triumphal arch, like those of Brittany, in front of the east end. The church was locked and the key was away, but a little girl snatched a sick bambino from its cradle, and carried it, and guided me to S. Maria in the depth below--even far lovelier and more refined in the delicate sculpture of its roseate stone than the great church above. All its great western doors were open to the brilliant sunshine, yet it was terribly damp, the font and all the lower part of the pillars green as the grass outside. But the exquisite pulpit and bishop’s throne were unhurt, and the lovely frescoes--even more beautiful in effect than detail--with which the walls were covered. Having secured the key, we returned to S. Pietro, entering it by the crypt--_l’incolonnata_--a perfect maze of little columns like the mosque at Cordova in extreme miniature. Most grand is the upper church in its orange-grey desolation; mass there only once a year. But our bambino was worse for the damp, so we did not stay long, and indeed it was cheering to emerge on the breezy uplands, where the whole air was embalmed with sweet-basil, as one trod it down.

“The city of Toscanella scrambles, a mass of brown towers, golden roofs, and grey houses, along the opposite hill, and has a thousand corners which are enough to drive an artist frantic--such gothic windows; such dark entries; such arcaded streets, with glints of brilliant foliage and flowers breaking in upon their solemn shadows. At a little inn I had luncheon--a dish of poached eggs, excellent bread, cheese, and wine, and all for forty centimes, so living is not dear in Toscanella.

“Then oh! how the skeleton horse galloped home under the serene loveliness of the pellucid sky, over the plain where all the little grasses and flowers were quivering and shimmering in golden sunset ecstasy.

“I cannot say the food here is delicious; it would be an exaggeration. All the little somethings and nothings a butchered calf is capable of, and vegetables lost in garlic and oil. The host’s name is Zefferino; he is a very substantial zephyr. He arranged for my going this morning to S. Martino, which I was most anxious to visit, for love--or was it hate?--of Donna Olimpia Pamfili. I so longed to see where the great ‘papessa’ died; and how the plague got hold of her on that most grand height, overlooking seventy miles of pink and blue distances, one cannot imagine. Rocky honeysuckle-hung lanes lead up to it--a little brown-walled town, with gates and fountain, and just one street--the steepest street in the world, up which the great white oxen can only just struggle--leading up to the palace and church. Before the high altar of the latter is Olimpia’s tomb, providently placed in her lifetime, with, I thought, a rather touching inscription, saying that she had really tried to do all the good she _could_; and in the palace are her full-length portrait and furniture of her time, and two pictures of Innocent X. The great cool halls are let in the summer months, and have, oh! such a view from their terrace; while close behind the palace is another gate of the walled town, from which glorious forest--the great Ciminian oak forest--begins at once, and stretches away to infinity. I drew there, and five little swineherds in peaked hats and about a hundred pigs grouped themselves around me. How _human_ the latter are! They all had names, to which, when their masters called them, they responded from a great distance, grunting loud, and running up as hard as they could.

“Then this afternoon--oh! wealthy Viterbo!--I have been again to the glorious Villa Lante. Surely never was there so beautiful a garden; never one so poetical out of nymph-and faun-land--the green glades, the moss-grown staircases, the fountains and vases, the foaming waterfalls, the orange-trees and flowers!”

* * * * *

_To_ W. H. MILLIGAN.

“_Abbazia di S. Gregorio, Venice, May 17._--On arriving here, I was persuaded to go to one of the principal hotels, sumptuously luxurious, and consequently intensely unsympathetic and unattractive. The mass of Americans, travelling like their own trunks, and with as much understanding of the place, drove me away at last, and I was enchanted to find a refuge in this dear little abbey, with its venerable court full of flowers and beautiful decorated gateway, outside which the green waves of the Grand Canal sparkle and dance. Walter Townley and his charming bride have the other rooms, and we go together for our dinner to a restaurant, and close by are Lady Airlie and Lady Kenmare, and, just opposite, Basil and Lady Margaret Levett, all as perfect types of high-bred excellence as can be found anywhere. I have enjoyed Venice more than any other part of this time abroad--have had very happy times with these friends in the afternoons, and in the mornings by myself drawing in desolate but lovely corners, unknown places, quite overlooked in what Symonds calls ‘Ruskin’s paint-box of delirious words.’ Yet I find colouring here very difficult, and quite a new style necessary, where _every_ shadow is transparent. Miss Clara Montalba thoroughly understands this, and the delicate drawings which come from her fairy brush have as much of the most refined poetry of the place as mine have of its most unimaginative prose. But, with the love which I suppose every one has of seeking what is unusual, she paints rather the dull and foggy than the bright days. From the windows of the old house in the Zattere, where she lives with her mother and two sisters, she has the most glorious subjects, in which shipping is the great feature. Her sister Hilda has also a studio in the top of the house--such a quaint and picturesque place, with two tame doves flying about in it. She described an old palace in which they had lived near Vicenza, where the immense dining-room table had a central leg, with a fireplace in it to keep the dinner hot.

“Two sets of people ought always to live in Venice: those who have heart complaints and those who are afraid of horses; the peaceful floating gondola life would be so suited to them. Lord Houghton’s sister, old Lady Galway, spent many winters here for the former reason. But no one ought to come here unless they at least _intend_ to see the best of it, and to enjoy it.”

* * * * *

_To_ W. H. MILLIGAN.

“_August 1, 1896._--I have enjoyed my six weeks in London with their much people-seeing. People laugh at me for liking it all so much, and still more for expressing my liking for it; but I believe I shall never turn out to be ‘one of those whom Dante found in hell-border because they had been sad under the blessed sun.’[548] How many people in ‘the world,’ so called, are perfectly charming! Surely if there are many like the Woods, Jerseys, William Lowthers, Pennants, Ilchesters, and oh! how many others, good must far predominate over evil in society.

“You know how I have always said I hated leaving London for Sundays, but I did leave it for three of them. The first was spent at Reigate Manor--Lady Henry Somerset’s charming old house, with an oak panelled hall and staircase, such as one is surprised to find near London. Lady Henry is a delightful hostess, and though so enthusiastically interested in all her good works, keeps them quite in the background. I was so glad to find George Curzon at Reigate, as pleasant as ever, and his American wife; and he has so much to say on all subjects that one does not wonder he has been spoken of as the man who ‘had seen everything, known everything, read all books, and written most of them.’ But yet the ‘feature’ of the party was Lord Carlisle’s son, Hubert Howard, who jumped upon the donkeys browsing in the park, and was kicked off by them; then upon a stray long-haired pony, and was kicked off by it; and who finally would go out to sea on the lake in a barrel in his Sunday clothes, and of course the barrel upset in the midst, and the nails with which it was studded left him with very few clothes at all.[549]

“Then I was two days at Hatfield--days of brilliant sunshine, glowing gardens, scent of lime-flowers, great kindness from host and hostess, and much pleasant companionship. The rooms have names of trees: I was in the hornbeam room, whence S. Alban’s Abbey was visible. I drew hard on Sunday amid the brilliant flowers of the garden: oh! how wicked it would have been thought when I was younger; but now no one thought it so. Most of the guests did nothing but talk and enjoy the summer beauty. Madame Ignatieff, coming to Hatfield, said, ‘Ah, I see what your life in great country-houses is--eat and doddle (dawdle), doddle and eat.’ Dear Sir Augustus Paget, of many pleasant Roman memories, sat out by me part of the time, and on the Monday morning kept me after breakfast talking of how very happy he was, how many enjoyments in his life. I could not help feeling afterwards what characteristic ‘last words’ those were. I went into the drawing-room to take leave of Lady Salisbury, and in an instant Lady Cranborne ran in saying that Sir Augustus had fallen in the hall. He scarcely spoke again, and on Saturday his bright spirit had departed. I was _very_ sorry. I had known him so long, and--I am again quoting George Eliot, whom I have just been reading--‘how unspeakably the lengthening of memories in common endears one’s old friends.’

“Lady Salisbury is delightful, not only to listen to but to watch. She is so young in her spirit. ‘On a l’age de son cœur.’ All she does, as all she says, is so clever, and her relation to her many daughters-in-law, to the great variety of her visitors, to her vast household, is so unfailingly sagacious. Even ‘to know her is a liberal education,’ as Steele said of a lady he admired. She is a great contrast to Lord Salisbury: as I watched him solemnly and slowly walking up and down the rooms with his hand on the head of his great dog Pharaoh, I was always reminded of Henry Vaughan’s lines--

‘The darksome statesman, hung with weight and woe,
Like to thick midnight fog, mov’d there so slow,
He did not stay, nor go.’

“The next Sunday I was at Osterley, in intensely hot weather. Sir E. Burne Jones was there (as well as at Hatfield), the painter of morbid and unlovely women, who has given an apotheosis to ennui--the Botticelli of the nineteenth century. He is very agreeable naturally, and made infinitely more so by his seductively captivating voice. He spoke much of Mr. Pepys’ ‘Diaries,’ and what a pity it was he became blind, ‘we might have had so many more volumes.’ He described going to dine with the Blumenthals, where the footman at the door presented him with a gilt apple, and informed him that he was Paris, and would go down to dinner with whichever of the Graces he presented it to. ‘I knew I must make two deadly enemies,’ said Sir Edward, ‘so I shut my eyes and stretched out the apple into space; _some one_ took it.’ He said peacocks made their shrill cry because they were afraid a thief might come and steal their beauty away, and then he talked of the Talmud--‘that great repository of interesting stories.’ The Grand-Vizier, he said, was terribly afraid Solomon would marry the Queen of Sheba, so he told the king her legs were hairy. Then, in his wisdom, Solomon surrounded his throne with running water, and covered it with glass. And when the queen came to him and saw the water, she lifted up her trailing robe, and he beheld her legs reflected in the glass, and they were not hairy, and he said, ‘The Grand-Vizier is a liar,’ and he put him to death. The beloved Halifaxes were at Osterley, quite delightful always--

‘Bright sparklings of all human excellence,
To which the silver wands of saints in heaven
Might point in rapturous joy.’[550]

“After leaving London finally I went to Oxton Hall in Nottinghamshire for my dear Hugh Bryan’s wedding with Miss Violet Sherbrooke--such a pretty wedding--and thence to Wollaton Hall, Lord Middleton’s glorious old house near Nottingham. On the way I stayed to draw Nottingham Castle, which I had drawn as a boy, but they have quite spoilt it by tearing up its fine old plateau of grey flagstones, and putting down asphalt, only, of course, in the drawing I left that out. Wollaton is a beautiful old grey stone building full of varied ornaments--niches, pinnacles, and busts, with a central tower and huge central hall. It was built by John of Padua with stone from Ancaster, all brought on donkeys, and for which nothing was paid, coal being taken and given in exchange for it from a pit already open in Elizabeth’s time. In the church, to which we went on Sunday morning, is the tomb of John of Padua’s clerk of the works, also the monument of Lady Anne Willoughby, _née_ Grey, aunt of Lady Jane, and a beautiful tomb of a Willoughby who was Knight of the Holy Sepulchre, with little effigies of his four wives, one of whom was mother of the Arctic voyager. The afternoon was wet, and amongst other relics we saw the clothes of this Willoughby hero, left behind when he went to the North Pole, and preserved with many other old dresses in a vast deserted upper chamber called ‘Bedlam,’ probably because the ‘gentlemen’s gentlemen’ slept there in old times, as in a dormitory. There is much else to see in the house, which was strongly fortified against the Nottingham rioters, and a number of handcuffs are hanging up which were prepared for them. The first evening I was alone with my delightfully genial host and hostess, but on Saturday many guests came, including the exceedingly pleasant young Lord Deramore.

“The late Lord Middleton lived in this palace in most primitive fashion. He used to have dinner-parties, but the dinner consisted in a haunch of venison at one end and a haunch of venison at the other, and currant-jelly in the middle, and then two apple-pies to match.

“Here is a delightful story of the present Bishop of London for you, which is _molto ben trovato_, at any rate. One day, he took a cab home to Fulham from the City, and wishing to be liberal, gave the man sixpence beyond the full fare. The man looked at it. ‘What, aren’t you satisfied?’ said the Bishop. ‘Oh yes, I’m _satisfied_,’ said the man; ‘but if I might, I should like to ask you a question.’ ‘Oh certainly,’ said the Bishop, ‘ask whatever you like.’ ‘Well, then, if St. Paul had come back to earth and was Bishop, do you suppose he’d be living in this here palace?’ ‘Certainly not,’ replied the Bishop promptly, ‘for he’d be living at Lambeth, and it would be a shilling fare.’

“And now, after all these luxurious fine houses, I am in what, to me, is the tenfold luxury of Holmhurst.

‘My green and silent spot amid the hills,
Oh, ’tis a quiet spirit-healing nook.’[551]